The number of days in a week has not always been the same. The Roman Empire, for example, used to have an eight-day week which gradually became a seven-day week during the first, second, and third Christian centuries. (As the empire gradually became more Christian, it adopted a seven-day week like the Hebrew calendar.)
The names we use for the weekdays are derived from a variety of traditions.
For example, the first day of the week has been known for centuries in English as the day of the Sun (following the ancient Roman tradition), although now, in contemporary Romance languages, it’s known as the day of the Lord (e.g. in Spanish, Domingo).
(Also, in English we often refer to Sunday as the Lord’s Day, a familiar religious custom since Biblical times).
The second day of the week is known in English as the day of the Moon. (It’s similar in other languages, too. The Latin word for moon is Luna, from which we derive, e.g., Lunes in Spanish.)
The Roman Empire continued following this Greco-Roman tradition of naming the days of the week after planetary spheres (which were named after pagan gods). The third day of the week was named after Mars, the fourth, after Mercury (Hermes), the fifth, after Jove (Jupiter), the sixth after Venus (Aphrodite), and the seventh after Saturn (Kronos).
Romance languages generally follow the Roman way of naming the days. Further north in Europe the Norse or Germanic tribes had different divinities and used different names for the days.
English follows the Germanic usage for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth weekdays which were named after Tiw (Tuesday), Woden (Wednesday), Thor (Thursday), and Frige (Friday).
Our names for the days of the week have complicated roots!
I guess a practical question today about all this is, “So, what?” If you like studying about where words came from and what they originally meant, it may be interesting—otherwise, probably not!
In Abrahamic religions, the seventh day (Sabbath) is when God rested after six days of creation. It’s also the day of the week commanded by God to be observed as a holy day, a day of rest. Religious Jews strictly observe this.
Christians, on the other hand, began to celebrate the first day of the week as their holy day, the day of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Curiously our modern “Weekend” celebrates the seventh and first days of the week together as days of rest and recreation, regardless of whether or not one day or the other or both are considered holy!
Of course, way back when each day of the week was associated with a different divinity, a different god, (which varied from country to country and region from region) you might say that every day was in some way a holy day!
In fact, something like the ancient custom of assigning the days of the week to a remembrance of a particular divinity still exists in that we designate the days of the year for the remembrance of special deeds of God or of the lives of certain holy people (saints).
This is a huge difference in our religious beliefs and practices in that we believe in only one God whom we celebrate in different ways on different days in addition to celebrating the huge number of outstanding and faithful servants he has had over the centuries.
16 July 2023